


Welcome Home

by gaialux



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Domestic, F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-29
Updated: 2014-04-29
Packaged: 2018-03-16 13:54:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3490820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaialux/pseuds/gaialux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>First it was Sam and Jess. Or maybe it was Sam and Dean. All that matters is that it eventually becomes all three.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Welcome Home

Sam worked as a lawyer for ten years.  
  
Ten years of defending the guilty, or the innocent whom everyone  _else_  thought was guilty.  
  
Jess asked him once, "Why criminal law?".  
  
"Not everyone means to do the wrong thing," he replied.  
  
\--  
  
Dean came back into their life exactly six months before Sam quit (or retired, as he put it once, though Jess could never take a retired thirty-seven year old seriously) his job.  
  
There was a knock at the door and Jess looked up from where she was attempting a stir-fry made with just about every interesting looking sauce they had in the pantry. She craned her neck, trying to see if Sam was in the living room.  
  
"Baby?" she called. "You gonna get that?"  
  
A heavy thud as a thick book is closed. Research for the newest case, she figured. Sam wouldn't share all the details yet, but the national news filled in the blanks. A murderer who claimed he saw the killings and couldn't stop himself. Like that hadn't been used as an excuse before. But Jess always bit her tongue and knew Sam was only doing what he felt right.  _Destiny_ , she was almost inclined to believe. Not that she believed in that kind of thing.  
  
She listened to the chain unhook from the door with a soft rattle and then, straining to hear now, a very muffled voice saying, "Hey Sammy."  
  
Those two words would set off everything that had ever happened since.  
  
\--  
  
"Sammy" was the only thing Dean ever called his brother. And Dean was the only one who ever got away with the nickname. Jess tried it once, just for fun, casually mentioning "Dinners ready, Sammy". He had paused for a moment before meeting her eye and the smile he gave was cautious at best. She didn't try again, because when Dean said Sammy, Sam lit up brighter than any Christmas light that covered the houses in their neighbourhood.  
  
That was about the time she started figuring things out.  
  
\--  
  
Dean slept in the spare bedroom that once had very far-away, tentative plans to become a nursery. Plans that didn't always turn out the way you imagined when a sparkling diamond ring was placed on your finger and, almost two years later, you were walking down the aisle to marry the man you could never completely understand but always loved with every piece of your heart.  
  
Jess loved him just as much as that very day, but sometimes she felt as though she understood even less.  
  
"Sam," she whispered. She tucked a strand of hair behind his ear and kissed a patch of bare skin.  
  
"Mmm?" He sounded sleep-drunk and his eyes came open, found hers in the almost-dark after a couple of blinks. "Are you okay?"  
  
She smiled. "I'm fine."  
  
Sam rolled over and she went with it, back pressed against his chest. She weaved their fingers together and this,  _this_ , was the only true plan that ever needed to come into fruition to keep her happy.  
  
"Tell me about you and Dean," she said. She stifled a yawn in an attempt to keep things casual. Considering the topic at hand, she doubted its success.  
  
Definitely not successful. Sam stiffened against her and the fingers entwined with hers clenched briefly.  
  
"What do you want to know?" His voice sounded tight, caught.  
  
"Everything." She tried not to make it sound like an interrogation. It was all an intense curiosity; Jess knew next to nothing about her apparent brother-in-law who had just happened to show up at her door two months prior.  
  
The bite of laughter Sam gave was just as forced as his voice. His breath tickled the back of Jess' neck and she snuggled back closer. "How about a less broad topic at two in the morning?"  
  
"Okay," she said softly. "You're glad he's here, aren't you?"  
  
Silence stretched out between them and, after a little while, Jess decided she wouldn't be getting an answer. She closed her eyes again.  
  
"Yeah." Sam's voice floated through the room and into her ear. "Yeah, I'm glad."  
  
\--  
  
It was a few weeks later when things were finally cemented in Jess' mind. She wasn't eavesdropping, honestly, it was just in her habit to open and close doors quietly and not announce that she was home. It had only been her and Sam in their house for so long and, even though Dean's presence was solid, it was also often a shadow — a ghost. Disappearing, flickering in and out of sight, never being quite solid. She understood less about him that she did her enigmatic husband.  
  
The boys were in the kitchen as she had heard the moment she cracked open the front door. Their voices raised just enough to carry down the hall.  
  
"So you haven't told her?" Dean said. Jess shrugged out of her jacket, definitely not listening. She would go straight to her room and let them sort things out. Though she did pause.  
  
" _No_ ," Sam said. "What would I tell her? She's my  _wife_ , Dean."  
  
A sense of dread quickly filled her and Dean's dark laughter didn't help. Jess was careful with her steps as she took a detour into the living room so they wouldn't see her through the kitchen door. But, from her position beside a floor lamp, she could gaze into the kitchen and catch sight of both of them. Dean's back pressed against a bench and Sam facing him.  
  
"I dunno, Sammy. Don't you think she deserves to know?"  
  
"No."  
  
Sam's response was so fast that Jess couldn't even think the question through. Deserves to know  _what_?  
  
Dean, as it turned out, was able to give her half an answer pretty quickly. "You're a hunter, Sam. Doesn't matter how long you managed to run away from it all."  
  
Sam hadn't been hunting in the almost two decades Jess had known him. He hadn't even shown the faintest interest in guns.  
  
"This is about  _hunting_?"  
  
Maybe Jess was interpreting things wrong, but Sam sounded just as surprised about Dean's statement as Jess herself. Now she was thoroughly confused. Though feeling less and less guilty about still standing there; watching and listening.  
  
"Depends what you find easier to swallow." Dean pushed himself from the bench and now his face was obstructed by Sam's shoulder. But he was close to his brother, legs touching, and something settled in the pit of Jess' stomach that she couldn't quite explain. "What sort of  _freak_ would you rather be, Sammy? Or did you forget? 'Cause I didn't —  _haven't_. Not for a second."  
  
"Why did you come back?" Sam asked, or at least that's what Jess thought he said. His voice had dropped low and sounded as caught and tight as it had been those weeks ago, in bed, when she questioned him over Dean.  
  
Oh.  
  
"Why do you think?" Dean asked.  
  
It was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, but Jess' eyes were already glued to the spot. Dean reached out, slid a hand over Sam's neck, then dropped it back to his side.  
  
_Oh_.  
  
"So tell me you seriously want me to leave, Sammy." Dean took a step back. "Go ahead. And keep forgetting if that's easier."  
  
Jess slid out of the room and went back to the front door, this time opening and closing it with force.  
  
\--  
  
Laying in bed that night, Jess found herself tracing Sam's body with her fingertips. He hadn't change much in their years together; still lean muscles and light tan, though now joined with the softest formation of wrinkles at the corner of his eyes.  
  
Though maybe he hadn't changed at all. She hadn't seen many photos of him before he came to Stanford. Actually, there was only one. A grainy photograph of him and Dean that must have been taken when Sam was a young teenager. As far as Jess knew, it still sat wedged and creased in his wallet. Hidden behind credit cards and ID.  
  
"Why aren't you sleeping?" Sam asked, breaking Jess from her thoughts.  
  
"Just thinking," she answered honestly. She picked up the movement of her fingers again, following a line from his chest down to the bottom of his ribs.  
  
"About?"  
  
Jess shifted up onto her elbow and twisted her hair out of the way. She starred at Sam, really starred. Trying to find a tried and true answer behind his eyes. It wasn't there, not in black and white at least, but she was pretty sure. Almost certain, even.  
  
"I think..." she paused and dropped a lingering kiss to his lips. When she looked back up there was no change on Sam's face or in his eyes. "I think you want him. I think you always have."  
  
\--  
  
So that was how it really began.  
  
\--  
  
The cottage was right on the beach, its bleached boards blending with the brown grass covering the dunes. It was the place they decided to settle after everything.  
  
Dean found it, then bitched about it. About how cottages aren't suitable for anyone who isn't a woman and over the age of fifty. Jess rolled her eyes and Sam put down a deposit with a very definite look at his brother that Jess could likely only half decipher.  
  
And that was okay.  
  
She learnt early on that not understanding everything about what those two had was okay, because they also loved her. Sam didn't love her any less because of his past with Dean, and Dean didn't have a difficult time falling love with someone his brother cared about.  
  
She never really knew how much she wanted that.  
  
Dipping her toes into the ocean at night when the water is still at a perfect temperature and lapped softly against the sand. Peaks of white foam pooled around her ankles and she couldn't help but smile. Couldn't help but always smile up at the moon — or where she thought the moon would be whenever it was new.  
  
Two people dropped down beside her and she didn't have to look to know who was who.  
  
"Thought you were supposed to be making dinner," she said to either — both — of them.  _Dinner_  being a questionable word when it was the middle of the night. Her eyes stayed trained to the sky and it really was beautiful to live here.  
  
"Sam burnt the kitchen down," Dean said, matter-of-factly and all. A fistful of sand flies in front of her and is followed by a screech of indignation from Dean. "What? You  _did_."  
  
"I burnt the potatoes," Sam said. He sounded much more mature than sand throwing would make him believed to be. "That's not the  _entire_ kitchen, Dean."  
  
Jess felt Dean shrug as his arm brushed her shoulder. "Close enough."  
  
"Why don't you go fishing?" Jess suggested, biting down on her bottom lip to keep the grin from stretching across her face. "We live on the ocean, why don't we own a fishing rod?"  
  
"Childhood mishaps," Dean said. Jess waited for him to elaborate further. He didn't.  
  
"Ah," she said, and let it sit.  
  
\--  
  
All three of them wandered back to the cottage when the sun was a small speck over the horizon, throwing out lines and patches of pale yellow. They managed to trek sand everywhere inside, feeling gritty under Jess' feet as one hand tugged her toward the bedroom and another wrapped around her waist. She never bothered to name who's hand was who's.  
  
Specifics never seemed to matter.  
  
When they reached the bedroom it was Sam on her waist, pulling her down with him onto the bed. Dean stood above them for about half a second before Jess urged him down and pressed their mouths together. Dean's lips hot and tinged with the faintest taste of ocean salt. Or maybe that was just the air.  
  
Behind her, Sam shifted further back and Jess let him take her along; leaving enough room for Dean to sink down next to them, gather Jess' hair in his hand, and kissing her harder until she was definitely sure that the sea salt was from Dean's lips — and his mouth, his tongue, even his fingertips as his free hand traced her bare thigh. Light enough to make her shudder just from that.  
  
"Good, baby?" Sam asked. She could feel the curve of his smile against her neck. It's followed with his own lips closing around her skin, a swirl of tongue.  
  
Dean freed Jess' mouth and she got out a "yeah" in response to Sam's question as Dean's lips dropped to the opposite side of her neck.  
  
She thought they must make a game of this sometimes. A competition, even. But they both failed miserably at winning each and every time. A total tie, and Jess could never play referee. Not when it was pleasant fire thrumming through her. Not when she looked down and saw Sam's hand run up his brother's thigh.  
  
Her twisted between them and them twisted up together. Somehow it worked. Somehow it kept working. Hands sliding over skin and Jess crying out when fingers press over flesh the two of them already know so well. Falling apart. Followed by Sam. Then Dean. But somehow all at the same time.  
  
\--  
  
Later she learnt the whole truth.  
  
It never changed anything.


End file.
